The Guitar Refinishing and Restoration ForumThis discussion forum is hosted by The Guitar ReRanch and was created to serve those interested in the arcane art/science of guitar refinishing and restoration. Those with all levels of experience are welcomed to participate.

I built a Vox teardrop using a 3 way switch and SD Antiquity II jaguar pickups. I was surprised the pickups did not come with covers.

The bridge is a hardtail strat style and I grounded it by running a wire from beneath the bridge to the back of the vol pot. I had some initial problems with the ground and checked with a multimeter on a string and on the ground ring of the input jack. The input jack ground was soldered to the tone pot. Set to continuity, I got nothing, but I got a beep from the string when I moved the other probe to the vol pot, so I moved the input jack ground to the vol pot and all is good.

Here's my problem now:

Plugging into the amp I get a good sound from the strings, but typical amp noise is much worse.

Is it most likely that the ground still not as good as it should be? I suspect this because the beep in continuity setting is a little crackily.

What about the pups with no covers or potting? Seems strange to me that they would sell them that way. Do covers have any impact on sound.

My plan is to set the multimeter to get a resistance reading and see how it reads. If its not 0 from the string to the ground, then I guess that's my problem.

This is my 10th build and I've never had an issue before. Would love anyone's thoughts

I'm not sure if this is related but talking about pickup covers, I recently got a Telecaster Thinline with humbuckers pickups in a CL trade.

Since it was a long distant trade, we met at a half-way point so I did not try out the Telecaster when we made the trade. So I brought it home and for some reason, every I ouch the bridge pickup cover with the switch in bridge position, there was hum. I experience this once when a friend brought his guitar to me. The pickup was not grounded. The end was floating. I grounded the wound end and that solve the problem. Same with this Telecaster.